Johann Hari: Why we need Harriet as deputy leader

If you're serious about inequality, you have to be serious about feminism

Thursday, 17 May 2007

Share
Close
- Digg
- del.icio.us
- Facebook
- Reddit
- Google
- Stumble Upon
- Fark
- Newsvine
Print
Email

If you are tempted to view the current Labour deputy leadership election as a smorgasbord of dull candidates all glued to New Labourism, it's worth remembering what happened when these elections were exciting.

In 1981, Tony Benn and Denis Healey stalked each other across the country, smashing together at pitched-battle debates that always seemed inches away from a riot. One of the groups backing Benn for the leadership was the Posadists, who called for "an intergalactic revolution" and believed that socialism would be brought to earth by aliens. Asked if he welcomed their backing, Benn unironically said, "socialism is a broad church, and I don't want to rule people out".

No doubt it was all a hilarious adrenaline rush to the people there. It was also such a farce that Labour kept on losing elections by landslides, handing the country to Thatcher-Tebbitry.

Buried in today's mercifully low-temperature, mild-mannered contest, there are still policies at stake that can reshape people's lives - and that can swing the next election.

All of the candidates have decent left-wing achievements to their name, along, alas, with the catastrophe of the Iraq war that now scars all Labour lists. But there is only one candidate who has a combination of serious appeal to the Middle England mums necessary to win an election, and a good left-wing, feminist agenda to offer them.

When she was first elected in 1982 as one of only 10 female Labour MPs, Harriet Harman outlined an agenda that was mocked as preposterous by old-style macho politicians on all sides. She wanted, in the new world of two-income households, to give working women control over their own lives - and make sure they had time to spend with their kids.

Harman stood up in the Commons and offered a stream of examples of why change was needed: "One [couple] explained to me how they exchange the baby in the factory car park as he goes in to work and she finishes her shift. Another said they communicate by leaving messages for each other on the kitchen table, as she's asleep when he comes in and she's out before he gets the baby up."

To make these women's lives bearable, Harman had a detailed, practical policy list, involving substantial maternity pay, paternity pay, decent nursery and after-school clubs, and a right to flexible working for parents.

But in the men's club of the 1980s House of Commons, these sounded like Posadist arguments from another galaxy. She was told these were "not political issues, but a private matter for individuals". Harman stayed calm through the sexist sneering at "her pretty little fingernails".

She pointed out that these feminist advances aren't a flimsy add-on to the Labour agenda of reducing inequality. They are at its red beating heart. One of the biggest determinants of a child's health, wealth and life chances is the time it has with its parents. Most kids of the working poor fall behind in language skills before their third birthday because their stressed-out mums don't have as much time. If you're serious about inequality, you have to be serious about feminism.

Slowly, through perspiration and persistence, Harman has achieved some of her agenda - but she wants, as Deputy Leader, to push it much further. For example, the current government introduced a lame, limping right for employees to "request" flexible working hours. "With the Factory Acts, we didn't exhort mill owners to stop employing children, we legislated against it," Harman said. She wants to make the right mandatory - a massive advance for mothers.

She has a slew of smaller policies that will make life easier for working mums. For one, she wants to extend the laws covering sick pay, so you are entitled to time off if your child is ill too, explaining, "You've got a child with a raging temperature, vomiting all over the place - what do you do? This child is six, you can't say, 'Goodbye, I'm off to work'."

When macho ministers like Charles Clarke and David Blunkett were ditched from the government, they spent their time bitching. When Harman was dropped - forced to take the bullet for an unpopular benefit- cutting policy imposed on her by Downing Street - she quietly got on with the Child Care Commission. Brought back as Solicitor General, she did a huge amount of work fighting domestic violence and freeing trafficked women who are being raped-for-cash.

Harman's policies aren't only good feminist practice - they are immensely popular in the suburbs of Middle England. In a recent YouGov poll, female swing voters, the "Worcester women" so important to winning, are a remarkable 22 per cent more likely to vote Labour with Harman. She was miles ahead of the nearest contender, Hilary Benn.

Beyond this race, Harmanism can trash David Cameron's flimsy, inconsistent bid for the women's vote at the general election. The Tory leader conspicuously belongs to a small clique of rich men, with barely a woman in sight. Out of 179 Tory MPs, only 17 are women.

Beyond this bad symbolism, there is a real meaty clash here between Conservative family values and Labour family values - and the Tories are on the wrong side of public opinion.

The Labour approach is to give parents of every kind - married, divorced, widowed, single - more time to spend with their children. It's a simple, popular message. The Tory approach, by contrast, is to single out one type of parent - the married couple - and redistribute vast sums of cash to them, while financially punishing the rest. The Tories sneer at flexitime: Cameron even opposed it for the parents of disabled kids. Harman calls this eerie 1950s nostalgia "back to basics with an open-necked shirt".

So how does Harman's clear, popular programme compare to that of the other Labour contenders?

Alan Johnson says he wants to be "John Prescott to Gordon Brown's Tony Blair". This may be the first time the words "I want to be John Prescott" have been put together, and it's the wrong moment to do it. Prescott was there to reassure the people most suspicious of Blair: the Labour base, and the Party itself. Brown doesn't have a problem with them. It's Middle England and women who are wary of him - and Harman reassures them. As she puts it, "I'm Radio 2 to Gordon's Radio 4."

Okay, so Harriet Harman is not offering an intergalactic revolution. It is unlikely space-aliens will bring socialism the day after she is elected. But she is offering a combination of real feminism and electoral popularity. As Labour faces its toughest election and its most demoralised members since 1992, can it afford to say no?

j.hari@independent.co.uk